Duncan Wilson: On behalf of Historic England, our primary concern is with archaeological investigation pre-conditions. Essentially, we believe the current system works quite well. We understand that developers need certainty and the system provides for conditions relating to investigation of sensitive sites. Only about 2% of planning applications are covered by these archaeological pre-conditions. Most developers want to know what is there.
I go back quite a way at English Heritage in a former existence and I remember the Rose theatre, where there was a lot of messing around that did not really suit the developer and did not necessarily provide the best archaeological outcome either. That was because there was no clear archaeology pre-condition. Afterwards PPG 16 was introduced and has worked quite well, we believe.
We are more than happy to discuss any perceived problems with the system or any real problems with the system. We are not actually aware that archaeology in particular is causing those problems. We think, on balance, the system as it exists works pretty well for developers because it is based on an investigation of what is actually there and an assessment of the risks. That relies on local authority expertise and resources to help make that assessment, and we have our part to play in that too. I suppose it would all depend on the regulations that came with the Bill, which we do not yet know about, as to whether archaeology was mentioned as something where a pre-commencement condition would normally be appropriate in a very small number of sites. In a sense, we would have to await that.

Duncan Wilson: Less severe ones. A number of concerns were raised in the context of the Planning Act that were perhaps more significant than in relation to this particular clause, other than for archaeology. Our concerns on brownfield land, design, massing and density are not really centre stage, as I understand, with pre-commencement conditions here.